Inductive-coupling transceiver for 3D system integration

This paper presents recent achievements of a high-bandwidth and low-energy inductive-coupling transceiver. First, a lTb/s 2.8pJ/b transceiver in 180nm CMOS is presented. Both clock and data are transmitted by inductive coupling at a clock rate of 1GHz and a data rate of lGb/s. 1024 data transceivers are arranged with a pitch of 30μm in 1mm² where 4-phase Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) reduces crosstalk between channels. Measured Bit Error Rate (BER) is lower than 10^-12. Second, a 0.14pJ/b transceiver in 90nm CMOS is presented. A digital pulse shaping reduces the transmitter's energy dissipation to 0.11pJ/b. Device scaling reduces the receiver's energy dissipation to 0.03pJ/b. The overall energy dissipation is 20X lower than the first transceiver without degrading the data rate and BER.